Lighten Up!

 If I were to tell you one of the reasons we chose this house was for the kitchen, you probably won't believe me. But it is the truth. We wanted a home that we could put our stamp on and make it what we truly wanted, and not pay the hefty price of someone else having done what they wanted first.

PS: Those appliances are long gone and changed out. I will share some after photos on the about the house page.

Soak in all the glory that is 25 yr old oak cabinets, brass knobs, and white laminate counters that every stain on them stays for a while just to make you feel a little crazier than the day before. You can scrub with bleach all day, they just want to see your pretty face.

Well, it will be a while before we can replace these cabinets and counters. There are other projects that cost a little less that we want done first. For months though since we have been here I have been looking at this tiny, useless "cabinet" above the sink. Literally, nothing could go up there, it's too high up for me to reach and the cabinet board was very flimsy. The only point of it was decoration in the original kitchen when it was popular. This cabinet has been an eyesore to both of us. We hadn't quite planned what we were going to do yet with it, but this weekend it was on a whim that we just wanted it gone. So wonderful hubs got out the drill, and set to work. It took all of five minutes to pull that thing down. We both wondered why we waited so long, it should've been done after we moved in.

We set out to Pinterest to look at some ideas for what exactly we could do above the window. There was electric wire already hanging out of the wall that was connected to a florescent light under the cabinet. That was not the type of light we were hoping to have in this space. All we knew was we wanted it to be easy and make it a wall mounted light so there wouldn't have to be any re-routing wires through the ceiling. So we settled on a sconce type of light that would go perfect in that spot.

Hubs had some items to return to Home Depot, so we used that same amount of $30 to do this little upgrade. Even with such a small budget, this project made a world of difference in this blah kitchen. We had our grey paint still leftover from when we painted the house. We used Gliddens DUO No VOC paint in Pebble Grey. As well we had white ceiling paint to cover the area above that hasn't been seen for many years. It was covered in black soot just from being in the kitchen.

               

Lots of yummy grease and residue on the inside. 

Hubs turned off the breaker for the electricity before removing the cabinet. It was attached with a few wood screws on each side and in the top. After removing the screws it only took a little wiggling for the whole thing to come out.

Next we painted the dry wall and ceiling with our paint. Hubs hooked up the light following the instructions for installation and we added a piece of trim above the window to really finish the area off.

Day view! Don't mind the little bit of uneven painting at the ceiling line. Crown molding is being added later. 

Night time! Look at all that glorious light! 

This project gave a tiny upgrade to this space and made everything feel taller. Every time we look at it we love it even more. As well, I can finally see better when I'm doing dishes at night, or when I give the baby a bath in the sink.

Are there any projects you've done in your house on a tight budget? Did it make a huge difference to you? Thanks for reading! Leave a comment or question below. - Alisha

Big Changes

Wow! It has been quite a while since I last wrote. Life took over for us and that is really all I can say. We have finally settled back down into a place that I can share about life a little more now.

First if you're a long time follower, you may notice that we changed the name of our blog. I didn't renew my domain for HomeAtEight in time, and well a company bought the name quickly and it is much too expensive to buy it back. I wasn't sure at the time where we were headed in terms of our future housing, so I also wasn't positive about what kind of blog I would be writing about.

Well, last December we were in a spot to finally buy a home here in Georgia for ourselves. It felt like a whirlwind, and at times everything felt like it was going wrong. But, we ended up in the first house we really fell in love with and it all fell right into place in the end. This home is a little country cottage style, exactly the kind we wanted. It needed some love put into it and that is another quality we were looking for this time. In Oklahoma we had the brand new home, built from the ground up and had everything we chose for that house. We absolutely loved that home, but we both knew we wanted a home with more character, land, and plenty more trees. This little abode has all of the things we were searching for and potential for more down the road.

Closing day

Another REALLY big change in our life was that we welcomed another baby girl to our family, completing our dream for ourselves. We found out we were pregnant right after I had come back from a trip to Oklahoma to shoot a wedding for a close friend. I really had thought we had missed that month, but lo and behold she just waited a few extra days to let us know she was there. The same day that we found out all of our financial funding was approved for closing, we found out that baby was another girl. We couldn't have been more excited to give Caroline a little sister. Daniel was even more excited as he absolutely loves that he has two girls and got to give our new sweet Eleanor a middle name after his grandmother that he was very close to, Hope.

Now here we are, months later from closing day and ready to share what we have done so far to our home, as well as our future projects we have in mind. Much of what we did was done right away and now we are planning for the really fun stuff to put our spin on this little cottage. Follow along with us on this journey! We are so excited to be back again. - Alisha


PS: Did I mention I enrolled back into school last year? I changed my major to Library Sciences and am on my path to gain my MLIS (masters) to become a librarian with a focus on history. I could not be more excited for what our future holds!